My Orion Intelliscope is driving me crazy!!!It worked great last fall. Now I can't get a good WARP to save my life. I know I'm using the right stars - I checked it with my skyscout.

Tonight I used Aldeberan and Alphard and I got a Warp of 30. I tried it three times and the same results. I tried it a week ago and got the same kind of results. I ran the "hidden" function tests and it seems to be right on.

With DSC systems, that sort of experience is sometimes either a loose encoder, a failing encoder, a cable, plug, or socket defect, or a configuration error. I don't know how much of this applies to Intelliscope. There should be a way with your system to check the basic behavior of the mechanicals for 360 degree range of motion in azimuth and 90 degrees in elevation. A warp of 30 might mean that one encoder isn't having an effect due to an installation problem, encoder defect, or something in the cables or a socket. In the past I've had all of these problems at one time or another; once, it was a tiny grain of sand in the azimuth encoder socket keeping one wire from working.

If you do a search on the reflector forum you will find numerous threads from people who have Intelliscope warp factor problems. It usually ends up being the azimuth encoder slipping. You probably should have posted your message to the reflector forum instead of here.

A really quick suggestion for something else to try if you haven't tried this already:

The Intelliscope hand controller is designed to work with 2 different Orion systems: The Orion Intelliscope Dobsonians, and the ORion SkyView PRo GEM mount.

With the Dob you must indicate when you think the scope is the vertical position before doing an alignment. With the GEM you indicate when the equatorial mount is in the "Dec=0" position. In both cases this is done by pressing the "enter" button when prompted by the screen. The Hand controller has both options. If your Intelliscope is set for GEM, it will ask for Dec=0. If it is set for a dob it will ask for vertical position. Using one setting when when it should be set for another will result in exactly what you report. Any alignment no matter how carefully done will result in a wildly inaccurate Warp factor.

To check this, hit the power button and carefully read the prompt that then occurs. It will give 3 messages one rapidly following another. The middle one is the one you should be concerned with. If it talks about a "Align Dec Mark" you have found your problem, because then the controller is set for a German Equatorial mount and not a dob.

To cure this simply hit the the up or down button on the controller and it will cycle to the right setting.

I have a SkyView Pro GEM with Intelliscope setting circles and at a 2 day star party it worked fine the 1st night, but seemed to malfunction drastically for half of the second night until I realized I had accidentally hit the down button, instead of the enter button, and inadvertently cycled the controller to its "dob" mode.